Oh. My. Goodness.

I have leased out my old house for the last 2.5 years. All three times, I have offered the home for SALE or LEASE or LEASE PURCHASE, but leasing it out is what has taken place. The first two tenants were great with payment, there were a few maintenance issues that came up (and I promptly had taken care of), and generally speaking did better than break even. Not by much, but something.

This new guy moved in April 1st, and quite the April Fools joke on me it has been. Lots of things have “happened” which I can’t prove they were by the tenant or just “happened to happen” all at once here. All in the last few months:

1. Water damage, mold in a downstairs room… he did have a swimming pool in the back yard dump 1000 gallons or so right by that room. But it *could* be from a drainage issue or something like that. Homeowners insurance will not be covering anything on that.

2. A plumbing/septic tank issue. Apparently this older house (built in 72) still has some cast iron plumbing. It can start to disintegrate over time, and we started having an issue with that on the drainage pipe leading out to the septic tank. Ended up paying about $1300 (the tenant is a handyman, he did it and didn’t pay rent).

3. The water heater went out, and I just paid him to replace that.

4. Now he’s saying that he has no water, thinks the well pump went out, so I just called a plumber to go out.

5. In addition, he has “paid for some things out of his pockets” and taken it off of the rent without pre-approval (about $350 worth).
6. (also, he said the washer tube came unhinged and some water got into the basement).

Goodness sakes. He is interested in moving out whenever I want to let him. But now, before I could sell it OR lease it again… going to have to fix all KINDS of things. And if I let him move out during the winter, the electric bill I’d have to sign back over to me would be super high during those months (all electric heat). I feel like his family has been really hard on the place. I have put HUGE money into renovations at this place (mostly when I lived there, then also before I leased it out the first time). But I’m going to have to completely gut and fix this room, probably take all of the wainscoting out of the lower level. I’m betting carpet/painting and everything. This is a 2000+ sq ft tri-level, so that won’t be cheap. UGH… not sure what to do. Ironically, I’m very interested in investment property when I get to Baby Step #4, but this is going to cost a boatload of money.

Sorry for the long post, just really confused about what to do.
Thanks